I finished the book last night - the first 270 pages were quite good and exciting, but the last 30 were highly disappointing, almost like the author suddenly hit the wall and couldn't figure out how to end the tale. Elsa was the name of the main female character from the turn of the century storyline - her young, handicapped sister was Alice.
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In July, Kate was invited to a peer's birthday party - a girl's afternoon at the local Build-a-Bear store including a minibus to get them to the mall and home again. Kate constructed a beautiful white bear with pink highlights, in a beautiful white dress with pink bows; she named the bear, Alice. Alvin, the cat, is currently sleeping in the box - and the bear is cozied in with Kate tonight.
I cannot imagine the cost of such a birthday party.
As a parent of four kiddos, who battles the revenge of the plastic junk each day, I am terrified of the cost of hosting such elaborate parties, the accumulation of materials no one really needs and the consumer mentality my children have quickly learned that comes with birthday parties.
Kate had a shared party for her fifth birthday. I thought it worked out beautifully, despite still costing a pretty penny. I have contemplated hosting another sharing party but am also thinking that hosting a smaller home based party - a few friends, a bit of cooking, arts and crafts, or experimenting. It wouldn't be too expensive, the children would still have fun and I will have done my part to stop the madness of outrageous parties. A home based party would also likely be easier to nix the copious quantities of unnecessary birthday gifts.
It will be interesting how we manage our children's expectations over the next several years. I remember a website circulating a few years ago - Birthdays Without Pressure - and am hoping I can organize myself to be less concerned with the party and more enthusiastic about the fun to be had.
3 comments:
Didn't I give you that link? We did the 6-kids'-birthdays-at-a-park thing again this past year, with a party for relatives at our house. That worked pretty well.
But I fear for this year. So far, only one kid in Peter's class had a birthday, but he invited the whole class to a Jumpy-Castle place. He got 25 little toys. I don't want to buy 20 little toys this year. I don't want Peter to get them either. There are 4 kids in his class with birthdays right near his. Hopefully, Peter will have a few good friends by March and we can do something small, but if everyone keeps inviting the whole class, I'll see if the other March people want to do something together and have some sort of alternative to gifts. Because it's just ridiculous.
I struggle with the whole BD thing as well. I prefer small..my husband wants my kids to have all that he never had....so big and elaborate. And once you start that precedence, it's hard to go back! I'm trying to figure out how to do a party without inviting the entire class. But I feel so bad about kids feeling left out!
We're just starting to enter this realm ourselves. Since A is only three, we've managed to keep it simple so far. For her first two birthdays we just invited family over and played in the backyard and then had homemade cupcakes. This year, we were in Ontario so had it at the cottage but still just family and a homemade cake. But so far this year we've been to a princess-themed party where the mum MADE princess dresses for each of the guests and then had tiaras and costume jewelry, etc. for them all. And we also went to a huge party at Shakers (don't know if you have them out there) with indoor playgrounds, arcade games, etc. and mini golf and go-carts outside. I plan to stick with our simple theme for as long as I can. And we always give books.
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